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 Warm summer days
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| A leaf soaking up the afternoon sun. 5:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
July 16, 2010. A beautiful, warm summer day in New York.
Recognize this guy? This photograph was taken of him shipboard the Bermudan, arriving in New York from a trip to Bermuda. The year was 1909, the Gilded Age, as he named it, was in its last throes. The Mrs. Astor and the Messrs Vanderbilt had gone to meet their Maker. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was busy transmogrifying herself into a Suffragette to get the vote for women. Most people living today don’t know that a hundred years ago, women didn’t have the Right to vote. Neither did a lot of other people. And getting it was a big deal, and rough. The men who made the rules liked it like that. Some of them, their karmic descendents that is, still do. |
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The great American author was 74 when this picture was taken, two months from his seventy-fifth birthday on February 7, and four months from his death the following April 21, 1910.
He’d had a great career. He’d had more than his share of troubles and heartbreak. And he had his triumphs which have outlived him by a century now. Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain looked at his time and his world with a skewed eye and more than a touch of the tweak and the tickle. He also played the game that was being played at that time; the money and means game. And he lost his shirt more than once. For, like many of us, he was romanced by all the notions of the great American success story and the good life that he observed so wryly and so wisely. So many of the infirmities and weaknesses flourishing among his fellows belonged to him also. And why not; a good rise was the promise. Maybe take a chance.
We don’t have a Mark Twain in our time, this time, which in so many ways resembles his. I know there are many among us who would volunteer or offer a suggestion but none fits. His genius was that he wrote about it and typified it; the human conflict that leads to all roads of ruin.
I think of him at times, wondering how this sharp and clever mind would see us and the world around us. I wonder how he’d see the Oil Leak in the Gulf, for example. Or the whole mortgage mess (he was a man who knew about the horrors and burdens of personal debt). Or the tattoos. Or the cell phones. In his world that would all be ripe for satire and parody. But Twain’s day was a far different day. The Tattooed Lady was a sideshow at the carnival. People went and gawked. They also understood that for her, it was a living. Tattooed ladies today are as familiar as the Golden Arches, which no dobut has its share; a dime a dozen.
The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum Collection auction was completed yesterday at Christie’s. Trigger fetched $266,000 and his silver Bohlin saddle garnered the highest price in the sale: $386,500. Roy’s Bonneville went for $254,500 and Bullet sold for $35,000.
The saddles fetched the highest prices although of the 347 lots offered, 347 were sold. 100%; that’s a successful sale beyond. The same buyer who bought Trigger bought Bullet the dog. Awww. Keeping them together.
I loved Roy Rogers when I was a kid. His brand of film and his strong, clean image seemed a little corny to me after I’d grown up, and it was definitely a Halloween costume. Except.
I really loved Roy Rogers and Dale Evans for who I thought they were when I was a kid and who I continue to think they were at this late age. Wonderful people. Good people. Caring people. Your friend in need. The best of what we called America. It’s actually the same image that won Ronald Reagan two elections by a landslide. |
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Trigger being watched over by Bullet "The Wonder Dog" German Shepherd breed, AKC name "Bullet Von Berge" Born 1949.
Trigger estimate: $100,000 - $200,000. Sold for $266,000.
Bullet estimate: $10,000 - $15,000. Sold for $35,000. |
I was surprised by the response we got from the Diary this past week that featured the Roy Rogers Collection Exhibition at Christie’s. A great variety of people – men and women wrote in their memories of what he meant to them as children, and why they liked him. The sentiments were universal.
In the years that I lived in Los Angeles, I had the opportunity “to meet” many famous stars and even spend time in the company of some. It’s an interesting feeling to be in the company, sitting across the dining room table from Jimmy Stewart, for example with his monumental public image as Good personified and sanctified. Big tall old guy without a hair on his head, and that low key resolute yet halting inflection. He was a man who knew what he thought and thought he was right. There are a lot of people who would have discovered quite a different turn of mind in the man rather than the image. However, it didn’t matter; the image that America loved was there, intact, in the chair across the table or on the same sofa. |
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The Bonneville, especially outfitted by Nudie the Rodeo Tailor.
Estimate: $100,000 - $200,000. Sold for $254,500. |
What is even more interesting is that so many of these people can be their public images and also be another -- the off-camera person who might not appeal to you at all. Walking through the Roy Rogers Collection last Wednesday afternoon, I was wondering what it would have been like to be in their company. Although I never met Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, I have a feeling that whoever else they were, they lived that image; just folks, they were it. They were solid. They were right out of Mark Twain, as a matter of fact, if he were writing today. And there would be a good lesson implied in them, for all of us.
That’s what was sold at auction. Solid; the buyers are providing the memorial, and everybody knows why. “Happy Trails to you Until we meet again ...” |
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